Farewell to quiet minister they called 'Rowdy'

Daryl Williams, pictured through the door of his electoral office, contemplates his retirement.
Picture: Barry Baker

Why, after 11 years, has Daryl Williams quit, asks Jason Koutsoukis.

Daryl Williams never embraced the art of politics. TV cameras scared the life out of him. Wheeling and dealing behind the scenes was never his style.

Announcing his retirement yesterday after 11 years in Federal Parliament - seven-and-a-half years as attorney-general and seven months as Minister for Communications - Williams admitted as much himself.

"I went into politics because I wanted to be in government," he told Perth radio. "It's not the politics... that attracted me."

Williams's timid parliamentary style may have earned him the nickname "Rowdy" with his colleagues, but away from the glare he could be something altogether different. Put him in front of a piano and he could be the life of the party.

Many can also attest to his preparedness to get down on the dance floor at the regular Wednesday night knees-up for political types at Canberra's Holy Grail nightspot.

So why did a man so diffident on the outside enter politics in the first place, and how will history remember him? "I wanted to make a contribution and the best way to make a contribution is by being in government, but to get into government you've got to go through the political process, so politics it has to be," Williams said yesterday.

Like former prime minister Bob Hawke and former treasury secretary John Stone before him, he had breezed through Perth Modern School and the University of Western Australia before winning a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford in 1965.

A successful barrister - he was made a Queen's Counsel in 1982 and was president of the Law Council of Australia in 1986-87 - Williams, 61, was one of WA's most respected legal personalities before entering politics in 1993.

His legacy as a politician will be more difficult to judge. It is clear Williams did not intend to become a crusading reformer, but rather a loyal and able public servant. In that sense, he did a solid job. His eight years as a minister have been free of any nasty public "stuff-ups".

He did what was asked of him and perhaps a little more. He set up the federal magistracy, introduced important reforms to bankruptcy laws, and was influential in ensuring that Australia ratified the International Criminal Court statute.

The architect of new laws to beef up the Government's anti-terrorism capabilities, Williams also played a key role in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the United States.

Apart from taking an active role on the "yes" side in the 1999 referendum on the republic, Williams has remained steadfastly loyal to Prime Minister John Howard.

And he has consistently resisted being labelled. "I don't think it's appropriate to stick labels on people, because how you react to a particular situation depends upon the circumstances, and anybody who doesn't vary their approach when the circumstances change, would come across as ideological," he said last year.

In an interview with The Age last week, he gave no hint of retirement - but did give the impression he was enjoying his new role as Communications Minister. While seven months is too little time to have made much of an impression on his new portfolio, Williams could hardly be said to have set that world on fire.

In the end it seemed the prospect of another three years travelling back and forth across the continent away from his family, and the grim prospect of sitting on the Opposition benches, proved too much.